


Someone Else for You to Blame

by toomanysecrets



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 22:39:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13040949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanysecrets/pseuds/toomanysecrets
Summary: Well, this brain's going to make work a little awkward...





	Someone Else for You to Blame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mmmdraco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/gifts).



> Explicit rating and noncon warning are both _extremely_ conservative. See author's notes at the end for spoilery explanation.

At first, the brain of Debbie Callahan, 27, paralegal and dog lover, killed in a car accident in Capitol Hill, seems pretty innocuous. Liv is a little more talkative than usual, feels like she’s getting away with something because she’s wearing comfortable shoes at work, and finds herself singing Taylor Swift songs off-key under her breath over the afternoon’s gunshot victim. She catalogs these effects in a remote, detached part of her brain that’s still totally her, and she’ll laugh about them later with Ravi. But really, compared to some of the personality changes she’s had to handle over the last few months, this is nothing.

She’s cleaning up, carrying some equipment to the autoclave, when she realizes that she’s stopped dead between the autopsy tables and is staring at Ravi’s hands as he’s stitching up the Y incision in Mr. No-Longer-Has-a-Left-Ventricle’s chest. His sutures are neat and even, his fingers quick and steady.

“Wow, Ravi, you’re really good at that.” Her instinct is to place a friendly hand on his shoulder and lean in for a closer look. But her hands are covered in viscera and full of scalpels, so she just gives him a friendly smile instead.

Ravi pauses and tilts his head to look at her, eyebrows raised, hair just the tiniest bit adorably messy. “Why thank you, you’re quite a hand with a bone saw yourself!” He swings his hips jauntily, preening, and returns his attention to the body. A few seconds later, after finding herself still distracted by the apparently mesmerizing motion under his lab coat, she gives herself a little shake back to reality and continues cleaning up.

 

The next morning, Liv tries valiantly to follow what Ravi’s telling her about their latest body, but really she’s just letting his voice with its sexy, sexy accent roll over her. 

“...Liv?”

Eventually she registers that he’s asked her something. “Hmm?”

“You kinda looked like you were having a vision, except you were smiling. Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Uhhh…” Eventually she can dredge it up. “John Doe, found in a dumpster behind a dry cleaner’s, stabbed in the abdomen?”

He’s staring at her suspiciously. “Close enough. He’s in drawer 12. Can you get started? I have to finish up some paperwork.” She reaches to take the file Ravi’s handing her, but since she’s still staring at his face, her hand bumps into his coffee cup. A venti latte with 2% milk and cinnamon on top runs all over his desk and pools on the floor, staining his lab coat in the process.

“Fuck! Sorry.” She runs for the paper towels in the kitchen area while Ravi frantically tries to safeguard his keyboard, his letter opener that’s shaped like some sword from Game of Thrones, and all of the files on his desk. “I think Debbie was a little bit of a klutz.” Liv doesn't actually think this at all, but as long as she’s going to be saddled with dead peoples’ habits and obsessions all the time, she might as well be able to blame them when it makes her life easier. And Ravi’s the only person in the world she can use that excuse with.

She’s on her knees mopping up the coffee under Ravi’s desk when he pauses and looks down at her. “This won’t look good on your performance review.” And Liv hears the familiar rushing sound as her vision goes gray around the edges.

_“This will definitely look good on your performance review,” gasps the man with graying hair and a hideous tie whose dick is in her mouth. They’re both fully dressed. His fly is down and he’s leaning against the edge of a desk. It’s dark outside the floor-to-ceiling windows and there’s only one lamp on, somewhere. The floor is carpeted but still uncomfortable under her knees, and she can feel the shape of him, hard against her tongue._

When Liv comes back to herself, she’s almost gagging and can still smell the sour stench of sweat and sex. She recoils so violently that she actually pitches back onto the floor, gasping.

Ravi drops a handful of sodden paper towels and crouches down next to her instantly. “Whoa, what was that? Are you okay?” There’s none of his aloof sarcasm now.

He looks so alarmed that she hurries to get words out. “I’m fine. Did any of your coffee survive?” He hands her the cardboard cup and she chokes down the dregs, welcoming the burn as it goes down her throat even though her deadened taste buds can’t really appreciate it.

“What did you see?”

Liv’s screwing up her face and swallowing desperately, trying to clear the phantom taste from her mouth. “That was a new one.” Ravi cocks his head at her quizzically. “Debbie was sleeping with her boss. Well, not, um, sleeping.”

She can see it on his face when he figures out what must have triggered the vision. Then his expression goes carefully blank as he stares at her for a few seconds. “So help me out. Is this awful or hilarious? Because I could really see it going either way.”

Liv’s not actually sure. She hadn’t been into giving Debbie’s boss a blowjob, but Debbie had been. And unlike with a lot of their murder victims, no one had gotten killed, maimed, or threatened in this vision. “Kind of both? Let’s go with hilarious.”

“Oh good.” Ravi actually giggles, and he looks so ridiculous with his shoulders all hunched up that Liv can’t help but laugh too.

“It _is_ the closest I’m going to come to getting laid any time soon.”

Ravi stands and gives her a hand up. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find another undead suitor soon enough. Or a friend with zombie benefits, if that’s your thing.” 

Liv finds a flirtatious smile on her face, unbidden. Then she clamps her mouth shut before she can suggest that maybe, if Ravi really wants to find all of the ways zombieism can be transmitted, he needs his own friend with zombie benefits. She ignores his confused expression and stalks off to fetch him a clean lab coat. Together they finish mopping up the spilled coffee.

Over lunch (meatball sub for Ravi, bacon, lettuce and Debbie for Liv) Ravi keeps spontaneously snickering at her, but he also brings her a cup of very strong tea doused with tabasco sauce and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

It’s not until she’s getting his signature on the paperwork for their John Doe that she remembers that Ravi _is_ actually her boss, and it occurs to her that maybe that explains a few things. At least, she thinks as she flees his office, her blood doesn’t move quickly enough for her to blush.

It’s not like she hasn’t noticed that the most consistent person in her life, and the one she spends more time with than anyone else, is pleasant to look at. Most of the time she doesn’t actually do it though — it wouldn’t be very professional of her to ogle her boss. But if it’s Debbie doing the appreciating? Liv spends most of her life eating brains, lying to her friends and family, and surrounded by death in a windowless basement morgue. Anything that makes it all more bearable is something to be embraced and cherished. Being along for that ride wouldn’t be so terrible.

Maybe Ravi’s not the only one who might believe her when she tries to blame her actions on her latest meal.

**Author's Note:**

> Noncon warning: Liv has a vision that involves sexual acts that she by definition cannot consent to. Very very short.  
> Explicit rating: vision is technically describing a sexual act but is very short and only barely descriptive enough to be called explicit.


End file.
